


love me donnie

by orphan_account



Category: Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (Cartoon 2018), Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles - All Media Types
Genre: Fluff and Angst, Future Fic, M/M, Not Biological Brothers, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Raph and April are bffs, twenty-something ninja turtles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-15
Updated: 2018-09-15
Packaged: 2019-07-12 11:52:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,204
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15994631
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: How twenty-something Raph navigates his trauma and sense of self while also falling in love with someone he's always been with.Donnie slammed his palm against the wall by Raph's head. Their faces were close, Donnie's eyes flickering to Raph's fanged lip. Raph held his breath, wanting, pleading in his head, but he could not let his anger down.





	love me donnie

**Author's Note:**

> Rated for language. The death warning is for Splinter who has passed before this story takes place. 
> 
> Thank you for kudos and comments i love it all❤

Raph struggled with the microwave. He felt like he was in some dramatic romcom -- but if that were true, he should be spending the night at his lover’s New York City apartment, like he was Christian Campbell in Trick, like a real person with a real story. Instead, he was crawling out of the pipe where his lifelong friend, blood brother, and now inexplicable crush, slept, right beside Raph’s section of pipe. Raph's door had become a black scab from when he had knifed the movie posters there and then slapped over the shreds with a bit of paint and regurgitated slugs of oil. In their shared space, the television set was surrounded by DVDs, the once bright cases warped and faded, no longer neatly organized on the shelves that had belonged to Splinter - any signs of whom had ended up tucked away in Leo's room. The only other visible belonging left of Splinter was his weapon. After it had seemed to offer itself up to them years ago when their home had been attacked, the last of their resources exhausted, Leo's jokes depleted and every strategy only leading to devastating loss - after Donnie's battle shell failed him, and the brothers all witnessed how weak they truly were as Donnie became the exhibit of their embodied punishment, horribly, unforgettably - Splinter's weapon remained by the entrance, sentinel to all their doings. Raph had grown to hate its watchful sheen with a passion that matched the sinking need he had in his stomach to see it there. The rest of the walls were decorated with more defensive weapons, kept obsessively polished by their fearless leader. Their fears became dormant, internal but ever-present, represented in their variation of defense, weaponry; their home became a shrine to their enemies, a dark sky with the artificial city lights of white faces on the movie posters Mikey had diligently put together between the walls' teeth. There was one blank space on the wall they had never filled, where there was previously a portrait of a peach tree that had been installed by Splinter. Raph had shredded it in a rage after the battle with the mutant, the one that taught them they were far from invincible, a grotesque amalgamation of sludge and human body parts. 

 

Raph faced away from the life that had formed in their home, staring into the microwave. In its black mirror, the mutant emerged, as it had installed itself in Raph's mind. Body parts thrust themselves at Raph as if on a conveyor belt. He still felt the same inexplicable sickness at his own body; not because he had anything in common with the dismantled pieces of humans, but because of how he could never be like them, even now, as they churned like a gleaming nightmare, things he could never be, even as they floated, tragically disembodied, dead flesh stretched over shapes that would never be his, mourned; his mutant green pieces would never be wanted or mourned in the daylight. 

 

It had been a while since Raph put much thought into combat. Once that was stripped away, his worthlessness became more evident. The only life he could have was beneath the dirt. They wouldn't get to love like humans got to love. Their existence would never be normal, or that desired picturesque lifestyle they had grown up dreaming of; they wouldn’t get to have the relationships and experiences they learned through one of the only things they had that gave them good dreams: film. The stories on-screen encapsulated their imaginations and moved like an oozing veil over their realities. Instead of living the commonly-performed fantasy of boy-meets-boy (because, although it wasn’t in many movies, that’s what Raph finally realized he liked), they got… well, whatever it was going on between him and Donnie. He wasn't sure how it could be something real.

 

Raph tried smashing the same buttons on the microwave he’d already pressed four times. Donnie had decided to “upgrade” the microwave - claiming the micro had upgraded to macro and the wave had upgraded to… a bigger wave - and now it seemed to be something else entirely with only the rare side effect of microwaving anything. Maybe the microwave hadn’t functioned perfectly before, but it hadn’t needed to be bastardized like this. Raph closed his eyes, just barely keeping his jerky exhale from unleashing into something violent. The restraint was only because Raph could not stand the thought of disturbing his solitude.

 

When he felt arms slide their way around him, he was jolted. He had expected, wanted, to be alone. He had allowed his desire to blind him to other possibilities, he was so desperate to reject any reality but the one he craved.

Raph felt himself stiffen like an oil-choked ocean.

 

"You just gotta dial this little knob there and... Here we go." Donny activated the side effect that actually cooked something. Raph stood in silence, feeling like his head was a microwave. "Were you planning breakfast in bed? You better have been planning to share." Raph felt Donny's grin in his voice and against the back of his shoulder as he nuzzled him. "Maybe after a few more lessons you'll be able to reheat pizza all on your own."

 

"Fuck you!" Raph's mouth twisted up like the end of a balloon as he spun around. His balled fist hurtled itself into Donnie's jaw. It cuffed him like a heavy, unrelenting sack of immediate regret, a force from which Raph could not detach himself, there was no eject button; he careened forward in time with the choice he no longer wished to be attached to, but it was grasped hard in his fist, always much heavier than Raph could remember in the split second before, and now it was buried in the wall. Raph blinked; he thought he saw Donnie's skin falling off of him like sludge, sludge oozing from his fist in the wall, Donnie's body deteriorating like sinking sand. Raph blinked, and it was a whole Donnie decking him in the face, not with one of his numerous homemade tech-wielding weapons, but with his bare knuckles.

 

"That escalated quickly." Donnie rubbed his cheek. "Someone make you cry yesterday, big guy?"

 

"Y'know, sometimes your jokes suck so much it's embarrassing," Raph spat, teeth gnashing as he decided what he wanted most in this moment: to punch Donnie's face against the floor or pin him down and twist his limbs slowly. 

 

"Whoa, there. Better calm down. You'll attract the beast."

 

"Why do you always have to get like this, you asshole?" Raph's voice stretched and reached a higher pitch, screeching the question as he could no longer hold himself back.

 

"Pugh!" Donnie spat as Raph managed to land a punch in his stomach. "Okay, okay," he said, clutching his abdomen. "You're right, I'm the asshole. Not whatever grievance has been released inside you and misdirected towards me."

 

Raph's dark eyes suspended over Donnie's, shaking. His voice crawled out from under his breath. "When will you get it? I am bad." Raph spoke slowly, making sure to feel the drag of each word like Splinter's blade through his gut. "I am evil. There's no taking back the things that I have done."

 

"Tell me something that won't comfort me," Donnie's voice gargled in sarcasm, but his bared eyes sank. The shaking overtook Raph's body, his biceps and thighs twitching, his neck aching as he forced himself to stand through every pulse of sludge through his veins. He couldn't stand watching himself hurt Donnie. He wanted to hurt him, but every time he regretted it and felt worthless when all he wanted to do was comfort him. "You are being controlled by this anger, Raph," Donnie explained for what must have been the hundredth time, yet it still had no bearing getting through to Raph. "It's affecting decisions that have nothing to do with that anger. Like decisions about me." Donnie slammed his palm against the wall by Raph's head. Their faces were close, Donnie's eyes flickering to Raph's fanged lip. Raph held his breath, wanting, pleading in his head, but he could not let his anger down. 

 

"God dammit!" Raph snarled, knocking Donnie's arm away and stomping off before Donnie had the chance to walk away himself. 

 

Raph washed his face again and again over the sink. He felt like the monster's sludge was still there. He couldn’t tell if it was getting better or not, or if it ever would. It had been years since that fight. Perhaps it was permanent. He glowered at his reflection in the dusty mirror. "I hate you.” 

 

It was months earlier. In Raph's room, he had allowed himself more comforts than their shared space permitted. A lot of it had been April - movie posters that echoed the coveted fates of humans, that still instigated that futile starry-eyed hope. Black curtains had been draped over some of them, and Raph's weapons of choice haunted the walls like melted candles caked in dust.

 

"It's like... I dunno... I just care what he thinks of me. I care if he thinks..." Raph struggled with the right words. They were there, in his head, but he could not voice them. "If I'm good enough." He stared hard at the floor, his shoulders wringing themselves around his head like erasers trying to smudge out his face.

 

"Hey, you're supposed to be doing my nails, too." April admonished, wiggling her bare toes.

 

"Oh yeah," Raph muttered, dipping the brush back into the jar of nail polish.

 

"So what's got you hung up on Donnie's opinion alluva sudden? What happened Raph? I guess I know your own opinion has been failing you," April muttered as she finished off Raph's newly purple toe. "But you are good enough."

 

"I dunno..." Raph faded into the muttering sounds of bubbling liquid.

 

"Oh, c'mon. You ain't pullin that shit with me. How else am I gonna help you? Your girl's got this, if you tell me what is going on. I owe you, since you did listen to me cry about you-know-who all last month." April flashed her repaired smile, the one Raph had finally started seeing after months of it being M.I.A.

 

Raph did a lazy half shrug to hide his own caught-up grin. "You just like gossip."

 

"You're not wrong SO TELL ME! I finished your nails and I'm bored now." April collapsed backwards onto a pillow.

 

"I can't." Raph buried his face in the shadows over April's foot.

 

"Okay I think you've painted that same nail five times now. I can't go all therapist on you unless you tell me allllll the deets. Hand 'em over. You're not functional when you keep your feelings all inside like this. Stop painting that damn nail oh my god move on Raph for the love of my toes! Hey, I'm taking Mayhem back to my place if you don't tell me." Mayhem snored, his overgrown body hurled over a bed of fifteen pillows and cuddled against Raph's leg.

 

"Okay okay! Geez, don't take away the only thing that makes me happy." Raph slid his hand heavily over Mayhem's floppy ears. After many sighs and flimsy words, Raph managed, "I... I've been... I have a huge crush on Donnie." He smacked his palm against his face the second the words left his mouth, flushed with embarrassment.

 

After April's initial, expected, outburst of interest and excitement, and after Raph tackled her square shoulders - ones that almost matched Raph's in strength and girth -to the floor to shut her up, he continued. "And... He likes me too and we've been spending nights together."

 

"Wwwwhaaaat! I can't believe it! That's so cute! I caaaan't!" April squirmed underneath Raph. Although she didn't quite match his mutated anomaly of strength, the intensity of her discipline and training over the years had certainly given her the ability to maneuver her way into besting Raph, if she wanted to. She had grown into a spectacle of muscle, her interests attracting her to Raph's brute style more than that of the others. Her physical appearance had grown to reflect this as she pounded muscles onto her upper body. She had become quite popular because of it, too, and seemed to have her pick of romantic partners of any gender- something Raph couldn't hide his jealousy over. It had almost become a problem until April's heart was broken, and Raph learned that even though she had looks that got her what he thought was what anyone could want, she still had the same struggles, and she still fought her own feelings of worthlessness. 

 

Now, as her hulking body lurched with giggles beneath him, Raph couldn't help but feel warm and gooey over the fact that he had a friend like April. "That's fine but don't be so loud about it, okay?" He sighed. "I don't wanna be talking about this to anyone."

 

"What? Why not?"

 

"It's embarrassing, okay! I like him so much..." Raph melted off April and into a blushing pile in his own hands.

 

"Oh, shit. And that's why you feel so bad about yourself." April said, sitting up. Raph didn't move. Embarrassment seemed to be emanating from him in waves of heat. "You want to impress him, huh? You want him to make you feel... Good enough."

 

"He cares about being smart so much...and I'm...not!" Raph grumbled. "Not to mention... I'm just not... What anyone wants." 

 

"What? Yes you are!" April threw her arms around Raph. "I know he thinks so. He likes you back, doesn't he?"

 

"Yeah but... I dunno how much. And I'm just... Not good enough. I don't meet his standards. He's always talking about the things he notices... Smart people... Humans... Not me."

 

"Raph, I'm sorry you feel that way. But you deserve to feel good about yourself. If Donnie doesn't make you feel good, maybe you should spend less time with him?"

 

"Yeah. That sounds smart."

 

"But definitely not what you wanna do, huh? You're one giant sulk right now Raph. You like him a lot."

 

"Yeah... I guess I do."

 

"But like... You are smart. AND better than any human I know. And I bet he'd tell you that, too, if you asked. Just sayin'."

 

***

 

The next sunrise, Raph could not keep himself from sneaking into Donnie's room. He stepped into the shadow that swelled in Donnie's room, his eye caught by the one central light that seemed to consist of a galaxy of silvery hardware and precise shapes. In his concentrated swirl, Donnie seemed to exist in an invented time, one that was all his own. Raph felt suspended in a void between the tug of his reality and the gravity of Donnie's careful world. Raph was enticed by the precision of Donnie's inhuman patience, his ability to control the way time behaved around him, as if he could do anything. His artificial shell arched like a protector over Donnie's shoulders, appendages aiding in the project he tinkered with over his desk. Raph envied that shell. 

 

"Hey." Raph growled gently.

 

Donnie looked up as if he had been waiting all night to do so, to flip his goggles up over his head so that his dark eyes fastened onto Raph's, like there was nothing else in the world that could bond together like their gaze, fusing between them in warm amniotic ripples. He remained silent. Raph couldn't stand it. He grunted, grit his teeth against his own twitching impatience, and forced down his swelling pride so he could reach out and brush his finger lightly against Donnie's shoulder as a gesture of peace. He side-eyed the wall as he prickled in wait for Donnie's response.

 

Finally, Donnie's fingers wrapped around Raph's wrist, and Donnie stood up while yanking Raph towards him. Raph leaned into a step forward, hulking over Donnie, his free hand gripping Donnie's desk for balance. He hovered as if he were Donnie's bewildered shadow. Their faces reached towards each other like hands grasping for a hold on reality.

 

Before Raph could allow his pained lips the relief of kissing Donnie, he had to ease his mind. "Do you..." He couldn't say it outright. "Am I enough for you?"

 

Donnie's eyes welled up with something that looked like relief. "Yeah," he breathed inexorably. "Raph..." There was an entire lifetime behind that name in Donnie's voice. "I can't get over you." He bit his lip and suddenly looked away.

 

Raph's eyes narrowed. He scoffed, "What is it?" He avoided the stained eyes with which Donnie considered him.

 

"Can I just... ask you this?" Donnie sighed. “I feel scared that I can’t trust you. Just… tell me I’m wrong. That you won't..." Donnie hesitated while Raph felt himself grow in size, anger roiling, his entire body on alert for the fear he couldn't stand. "I mean, emotionally. When everything seems to be telling me that you will.”

 

“You - you can’t trust me?” Raph’s features fluctuated with wrenching regret and intolerable oppression. “That sounds like your problem." Donnie grabbed Raph's arms, and Raph lurched away, grimacing. "Let go of me!" 

 

"Can you getover yourself for one minute?" Donnie said, maneuvering his leg behind Raph's ankle as Raph attempted to take an attack stance. Raph grabbed onto one of Donnie's motley contraptions for balance. The thing shook violently, then crashed into a pile with Raph.

 

"Shit! Damn it! I'm so fucking stupid! Ugh!" Raph cried, and then continued crying - it was like the dam burst, and he couldn't stop it. He shoulders shook with how worthless he felt.

 

"No, Raph, I'm stupid," Donnie groaned, dropping in front of him and grabbing onto Raph's shoulders. "You just... need more time. Look, that's fine. I'm here. You're afraid I'll leave you. But we've always been together. We took an oath. I'm with you. Just like you're with me. Okay? Just forget about everything else for now. I'm just glad I'm with you."

 

"But I'm such an idiot - I can't figure out anything - My hand needs to be held, I'm not like those people you admire, the intelligent people you notice all the time... I'm not good enough." Raph stood up, anger taking over. "Get off of me!"

 

Donnie fell backwards. Raph glared down at him.  Donnie's face suddenly broke out into an uncontrollable grin.

 

"What?" Raph sputtered.

 

"You just look... So darn cute when you're mad... I'm sorry. Trying to be serious." Donnie wrung his mouth as if trying to squeeze the smile out but his face was soaked with pleasure. "I'm just... Really happy you came to see me tonight." Donnie looked away with an uncharacteristic shyness that utterly flattered his lithe and chiseled features. "I thought you were mad at me."

 

"Fuck, Donnie, I'm not mad at you." Raph shook his head, still frustrated.

 

"Then what's up? Wanna cuddle?"

 

Raph blinked, almost pouting; he felt like he was lighter, just at the sound of the tenderness in Donnie's voice. "Aren't you working on your...thing?"

 

"Hell no, not if you're here. I'd much rather work on you."

 

Raph blushed, stubbornly trying to keep from deflating completely. When Donnie looked like that, he could forget the torture of his mind. "Fine. Let's cuddle."

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
